Comparative analysis of two leader online travel agencies in the Barcelona market

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to analyze the different applied practices as well as the tools and methods that the two leader global online travel agencies give to their hotel partners in order to sell their products and services in the Barcelona Market by examining the current practices carried out by both agencies and the hotel perspective of those practices, and compare both of them to understand and see which practices gives better results and why from the hotel point of view. In addition, an analysis of the importance for a hotel property of working with an online travel agency and the analysis of the two online travel agencies was carried out as well as an identification of the benefits of working with both of them. Afterwards, some recommendations and tips for hotel properties to know more deeply the two companies have been mentioned. Selling products through the internet is becoming a very common activity in the last few years. Although for many years booking services and products online has not been very common, nowadays we can see that our industry has the majority of their leisure activities, services and products available online, and the main channel for companies to sell this products is through the internet. The Tourism and Hospitality Sector needs this channel to reach the largest number of people both nationally and internationally. To develop the fieldwork, and so, obtain the information needed to do the research, one qualitative technique and one quantitative technique have been used. First of all, 2 in-depth interviews with open-ended questions to the area managers of the two Online Travel Agencies were carried out. Secondly, a survey was sent to the hotels to know the prospect of these on the two online travel agencies, giving me a representative result. As a result of the research, it can be concluded that the two leading online travel agencies in the Barcelona market, Travel Agency 1 (TR1) and Travel Agency 2 (TR2), use similar practices when working with their main partners, and there is no evidence that some practices are better than others. Most hotels work with these two agencies equally, as both are leaders in the market both nationally and internationally, and is the way to get more visibility, which helps them to reach more people than through their own channels.